Portege 3500 Hello I have a Portege 3500 and am using Windows XP tablet PC edition. When I turn it on Windows Page shows but then the screen goes blank and it goes no further. It does not have a cd drive so I bought a Philips CD Drive but laptop does not seem to recognise it. Any ideas how I can get the Recovery and Config Builder disks as I have lost Disk 1 and how do I make my cd disk usable or do I have to use a Toshiba cd drive. Much appreciated. Thanks Mrs P

I bought a toshiba 3500 used from someone without a disc, and now it has completely crashed. I can't find windows xp on the market anywhere and all I have is my original windows xp disc. When I boot the tablet up, it says, "A disk error occurred," "Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart." When you do that, it says the same thing over. I have the external cd rom, and I can't even get the xp set up to start. I need to reformat the hard drive. How?I bought a toshiba 3500 used from someone without a disc, and now it has completely crashed. I can't find windows xp on the market anywhere and all I have is my original windows xp disc. When I boot the tablet up, it says, "A disk error occurred," "Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart." When you do that, it says the same thing over. I have the external cd rom, and I can't even get the xp set up to start. I need to reformat the hard drive. How?

3 Answers

I have had the same problem. I tried a new hard drive but that didn't work. I found the recovery discs I had were faulty and got new ones from Toshiba (took about a week). Connect the CD drive with the first disc installed and power on, hold the "C" key down and it should look to the CD drive to boot up. You can also watch for the "Toshiba" screen which has a line of icons across the bottom (I think they represent *network *CD drive *floppy drive and some others) and you can press the right or left arrow keys and see an indicator under each icon move from one to the next, stop under the CD drive.

I was told by a BestBuy Geek squad tech that it could easily be a motherboard error and it's not worth repairing as those parts are more than a new laptop. I did get a blue-screen error message the first time I tried the new recovery discs, but the second time worked. When you're successful the system will be back in 2003 (or whatever year the computer was sold) and you'll have to download updates from Toshiba and from MS Windows. As I'd run the recovery-and-update several times I found that updating Windows XP beyond Service Pak 2 gave me more errors, when I stopped with SP2 it runs OK.

You can obtain the Recovery disk from Toshiba. Toshiba hotline number 1-800-457-7777 (US)
0844 800 6020 (UK). You need to provide your computer's part number correct to get the matching recovery disk. Usually they charges $39.95 including shipping to your address in US. Alternately you can go to http://uk.computers.toshiba-europe.com/cgi-bin/ToshibaCSG/generic_content.jsp?service=UK&ID=Support_Homepage_uk

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If you have Windows XP tablet PC Edition 2005 installed on it, you can use the Wacom Pen to enter text instesd of type it.

On Windows XP tablet PC Edition 2005, there is an Input panel Icon on the tray bar, usually to the left, close to the Start button.Use the pen to click the Input Panel. When it opens showing you a black line on yellowish backround you can start using the pen as if it were on paper. Depending on the pen input setting it will insert automatically or waits for you to press the insert button.However for the converted text to be inserted you need to have a text editing software open (Word Pad for example.)

If when you open the input panel you see a keyboard you can change that to handwriting (continuous line) or typing separate letters.

The computer can be taught to recognize your handwriting: You will need to practice. You might have to download and install the relevant ink recognition package for your language. Look for it on the Microsoft tablet PC page.

Do you have Windows XP with servicepack 3 installed? If so then there is a known problem with the screen driver and XP sp3. Go bakc to SP2 and reinstall de display drivers this should clear the problem.

If anyone has working tident drivers for XP SP3 I would be greatfull!!

You should contact Toshiba service and order a recovery CD for that model. You can also install any Windows XP version, but it will not provide support for the tablet functionalities, which means that you will have a notebook that is not a tablet.

ok you wouldn't have been supplied a recovery cd, you have to create it, to create one have 2 blank dvd discs ready and go to start menu and select help type in a search for recovery cd, this will explain how to create one....if your computer won't load into windows you will have to re-install windows again, cheers, any other probs please get back to me.